clothes. He dominated their ugly convention with his height, his face so ruddy and fresh under the pale brown of his hair, his alert, assured, deft movement. His high good nature had the effect of sweetening for him even Clara Britton's flavorless manner. The "We were speaking of you," with which she saw him to his seat, had all the warmth of a smile, but a smile far in the background of Flora's immediate possession. Indeed, Flora had seldom had so much to say to Harry as at this moment of her excitement over what he had actually seen. For the evidence that he had seen something was vivid in his face. She had never found him so splendidly alive. She had never seen him, it came to her, quite like this before. She shook the paper at him. "Tell us everything, instantly!" He gaily acknowledged her right to make him thus stand and deliver. He shot his hands into the air with the lightening vivacity that was in him a sort of wit. "Not guilty," he grinned at her. "Harry, you know you were in it. The papers have you the most important personage." "Oh, not all that," he denied her allegation. "They had the whole lot of us cooped up together for investigation for as much as two hours. I thought I shouldn't have time to dress! I'm as hungry as a hawk!" He rolled it out with the full gusto with which he was by this time engaged on his first course. "Poor dear," said Flora with cooing mock-sympathy, "and did they starve it? But would it mind telling us, now that it has its food, what is true, and what was the gallant part it played this afternoon?" "Well," he followed her whimsical lead, "the chief detective and I were the star performers. I found the ring wasn't there, and he found he couldn't find it." "Don't you know any more than the paper?" Flora mourned. "Considerably less—if I know the papers." He grinned with a fine flash of even teeth. "What do you want me to say?" "Why, stupid, the adventures of Harry Cressy, Esquire. How did you feel?" "Thirsty." "Oh, Harry!" She glanced about, as if for a missile to threaten him with. "Upon my word! But look here—wait a minute!" he arrived deliberately at what was required of him. "Never mind how I felt; but if you want to know the way it happened—here's your Maple Room." He began a diagram with forks on the cloth before him, and Clara, who had watched their sparring from her point of vantage in the background, now leaned forward, as if at last they were getting to the point. "This is the case, furthest from the door." He planted a salt-cellar in his silver inclosure. "I come in very early, at half-past two, before the crowd; fail to meet you there." He made mischievous bows to right and left. "I go out again. But first I see this ring." "What was it like?" Flora demanded. "Like?" Harry turned a speculative 

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